


the stars are out tonight

by besidemethewholedamntime



Series: a life we do not want (a life we might yet have) [2]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Historical AU, Light Angst, Part 2
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-19
Updated: 2020-01-19
Packaged: 2021-02-27 08:28:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,802
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22324078
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/besidemethewholedamntime/pseuds/besidemethewholedamntime
Summary: "In his dreams she is waiting, the way she was when he asked her to dance. Her cheeks are flushed, her eyes are sparkling and she reaches out her hands to welcome him, but when he reaches back she disappears, like a puff of smoke dissipating in the wind."Fitz thinks of Jemma often. A sequel to 'the last sunlit walk'
Relationships: Leo Fitz/Jemma Simmons
Series: a life we do not want (a life we might yet have) [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1606864
Comments: 10
Kudos: 25





	the stars are out tonight

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ohfaiths](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ohfaiths/gifts).



> This is for my wonderful bean Olesya! I'm so sorry you're feeling ill and I hope this goes a little way to cheer you up <3 
> 
> This is a sequel to my work 'the last sunlit walk' which you don't *technically* have to have read in order to understand this one but it would help! I finally decided to continue this and this isn't the final instalment so I'd just be wary of that if you're expecting a happy ending. (There will be one eventually but for now...)
> 
> I hope you enjoy <3

He thinks of her often.

It’s not always a conscious thought, a thought of _Oh, I miss Jemma_ that pops into his head though that certainly is frequent enough. More often than not it’s in the small things: the way the butler has rearranged the library using the system she thought of, the cook rescuing a spider from underneath the table instead of squashing it with her rolling pin, and the maids singing again as they throw open the shutters in the morning and usher in a new day.

It’s been two months now, since that dance that meant everything and yet could mean nothing at all. He’s learnt to live with the loss. Jemma was only here for a short time, this is what Fitz reminds himself. She was here for only the Summer and he never even knew her before then. She was just a cousin of Hunter’s, nameless and faceless with a title in her own right but barely the money to match it. Her guardians were intent on finding her somebody, sure that at Fitz’s nuptials there would be an eager young Earl or Baron just waiting for Jemma Simmons. Fitz remembers laughing at the letter when Hunter came with the request. _Oh God,_ he’d said, back when she was just an idea. _That’s such a pity._

She’s not nameless or faceless now, and no matter how hard he tries he can’t make her so. In his dreams she is waiting, the way she was when he asked her to dance. Her cheeks are flushed, her eyes are sparkling and she reaches out her hands to welcome him, but when he reaches back she disappears, like a puff of smoke dissipating in the wind.

He stands and looks at the stars tonight, standing on the deck outside the ballroom where they danced what feels like a lifetime ago. It’s September now and the nights have a certain bitter chill to them, the wind whistling through the hills that surround the estate. He should get a coat but he doesn’t want to move and break the calm that he only feels out here.

The sky is beautiful, a thousand twinkling lights. When he was a young boy, before he went away to school, his father used to stand with him in this very place and point out the constellations, holding Fitz’s hand and tracing them out. His father was a tall man, with a loud voice and hard eyes and even when he was home he wasn’t, too lost in his own head and his pursuit for knowledge that he hardly acknowledged anyone around him. Fitz’s last memory is of him clasping his hand to the point of pain and nodding tersely when Fitz was leaving to go to Oxford. It’s the last time he saw his father before he died.

He hadn’t been planning to return, or at least he planned on his father living much longer before Fitz was forced back into the fold. He had planned on a lot of things: on travelling, studying, on finding a wife whom he loved and loved him in return. He had planned on his father being sensible, on not getting himself into so much debt that Fitz is sure he died just so he could get himself out of it. It would be exactly like the old man – leaving his mess for other people to clear up without a thought in the world as to how they’d do it.

His wedding was something that he prepared for half-heartedly, and even before he met Jemma he knew that this marriage was one born of convenience and mutual interests – he wanted money and she wanted a title - and not of love. He had hoped for mutual respect and perhaps adoration if it came to that. It wasn’t much, but it was something, and it meant that his mother and the servants and staff that had raised him would get to stay in the house. It was a price that he, however reluctantly, had been willing to pay.

That’s all gone now, plans fallen apart as easily as a house of cards, one by one until nothing remains. First Jemma left, an almost unbearable agony, followed by his fiancée leaving, an agony of lesser quantity so much so that it hardly qualified as an agony at all. A proposition of a better nature had come in. _I’m sorry, dear, but Duchess just has such a better tone to it, don’t you think? Don’t fret, I won’t ask you to return any of the money I’ve already spent – that would be quite improper – but I shall have to insist that is it. There shall be no more. I am sorry, but this is for the best. Don’t you agree?_

She had left that night and not one person had been sorry to see her go. The money had been enough for a while, and it keeps them floating while he searches for for another way to float the sinking ship. It’s been two months since then, though, and they’re in very real danger of being pulled under the relentless waves.

“Knew I’d find you out here.”

Fitz doesn’t turn around but sees Hunter join him out of the corner of his eye. He’s been coming over a lot lately, the two of them trying to devise any plan to save them all. Of course there is only one answer, really, but it doesn’t stop them trying.

When Fitz doesn’t answer Hunter only sighs, moving in closer until they stand side by side looking up at the stars. “It’s getting cold. Maybe you should come inside.”

“Have you heard from her?”

It’s the first time he’s asked in these last two months, indeed the first time he’s been brave enough to do so. He doesn’t know why he thinks to ask now, but there’s a feeling in his chest that tells him he should.

Hunter sighs again. “Yes. She’s sent a letter.”

The cold cannot touch him. This is the first time somebody else has mentioned her and it makes her real again, not just some figment of imagination his broken heart has conjured up. He can almost feel the warmth in his face from that fragrant Summer night when it felt as though, if they only kept on dancing, eventually everything would be alright.

“Is she happy?”

“Fitz…” Hunter’s voice carries a warning, reminding him that there’s a reason they’ve never spoken of her. “You don’t want to do this to yourself.”

He turns to his friend, not embarrassed by the slight glimmer in his eye. “Please,” he says. “I’ve just… I’ve got to have something.”

Isn’t that what he told her that night, the first and only time he ever held her in his arms? _I have to know, I just – I have to have something._ There he was, bound by duty to a marriage he knew would only cause him pain and he asked her to give him the only thing that would make it bearable; knowing that Jemma Simmons felt the way same as he did, that she loved him, too.

_I take it you won’t be coming back._

_No. I won’t be. You’ll have your new life. I think it’s best I try to find mine._

It was right, sensible as only Jemma could be. If plans had gone ahead as they should then she never could have come back, and if she had come to visit Hunter then he never could have known. Even glancing at her across a crowded ballroom would have been like a dagger to his heart, a pain so great he wouldn’t have been able to move for it.

His fiancée had known about it, he’s sure of it. He felt terrible about it, for loving another that was not his bride to be, and continued to feel awful until she left. Why should he care now, about her feelings? The only thing she cared about was the title and soon she’ll be a Duchess with some marvellous estate down south and he’ll be…

Well, he’s not entirely sure.

“Mate-” But at Fitz’s look he relents and says, “She’s alright. She’s gone to Hillfoot House.”

Fitz frowns. “That’s not her estate.”

“No, it’s not. It’s the one at the border, you know with the farm and the village. Said she wanted to get away from it all for a while.”

Jemma’s family have old money but simply not enough of it. Or at least that’s what he thought. He wasn’t aware of her other estate. His face must betray his thoughts for Hunter says, “Don’t look like that, Fitz. The farm’s in profit and keeps that one ticking over. There’s not enough to spare. She can’t bankrupt herself to save you.”

“I would want her to,” he says tightly, briefly looking down at the ground before looking back up at Hunter. “Does she know?”

“About the wedding?” Then: “Yes, she does.”

Fitz scrubs looks away, scrubbing his hands down his face as he does. He entertained visions, when the wedding was called off, that Jemma would be told and that she would come back. Maybe not to marry, not to stay with him, but come back at least. Draw out the Summer for a few months more. As the weeks have worn on his only solace might have been that she hadn’t heard, that she’d buried her head and simply hadn’t known the scandal. Of course that’s not the case, now, and the tiny flame of hope that he has by some miracle kept burning flickers and dies.

 _I think it’s best I try to find mine._ That’s what she’d said. That’s why she hasn’t come back. She’s finding her new life, far away from him to spare them both the heartache. He can’t run away, as much as he wishes to. It’s never been an option for him.

He nods, throat too tight to speak, and looks back up at the stars. Such dependable things. They never change. When the world below them is awash in chaos and misery, falling apart at the very seams, they continue to shine on into the infinite. How wonderful to be so unaffected by it all.

“Don’t do this to yourself, Fitz,” Hunter says again, sounding like he’s tired of doing so. “It’s not an option.”

“I could-”

“No. You can’t marry her.” There’s such a fire in Hunter’s words that Fitz has to look. “The she-devil may have gone but it doesn’t matter. You know it and she knows it. You were never going to be able to marry Jemma. That’s why everyone thought it was such a blessing that you met her when you did. You were already engaged, never would have broken it, and it saved you from wanting the one person that you could never have.”

There are tears burning in his eyes, hot and painful, almost as painful as the burning in his heart. “I hate my father.”

Hunter laughs shortly. “He always was a slippery bastard, your old man.”

He certainly was. Nobody could ever catch him. Fitz hated him, never loved him, but he does understand him. Alistair Fitz had other dreams, and the frustration that he couldn’t properly chase them made him who he was. Fitz doesn’t want to be like that, but he feels his heart grow harder. He can’t go back to Oxford, he can’t be with who he wishes… It feels a lot like history repeating itself.

“ _If-”_ He begins, but Hunter doesn’t let him wander. He looks like he’d rather be inside.

“You two would be a good match, there’s no denying it. You’re stupidly perfect for each other and it made the rest of us nauseous quite frankly. Your mother used to talk about setting up a match.”

The possibilities of it, the way things might have gone in a better life, make him feel brittle. To know that Jemma Simmons could have ben his wife if not for the destructive nature of his father makes him feel as though he could shatter, for he holds himself to tightly he’s sure he’ll explode into a thousand shards. It’s like he was handed something, something he got to hold for a second, and now it’s been snatched away.

“How do you know that?”

A shoulder bob from Hunter. “Mother was talking about it. She said it was a shame.”

Fitz feels so tired. “Of course.”

The stars twinkle back at him. Once, during those midsummer nights, he’d taken a walk in the gardens. It had been well after midnight but he had been unable to sleep, his mind twisting and turning with thoughts let loose by the dark and the quiet. He’d expected to be alone, and had thought he was, until he’d turned a corner and there had been Lady Jemma Simmons, standing on the grass and looking up at the sky.

 _“What are you doing out here?”_ He had asked. _“It’s a little late, is it not?”_

She had turned to him, face full of thoughts, and cocked her head. _“I could say the same for you.”_

They had talked for hours on that July night, neither of them troubled by the outside world. They had talked so long that the only thing that stopped them was the traces of dawn bleeding through the dark sky and it had been with reluctant sighs they had walked back to the main house and parted ways.

“I miss her,” he says, voice cracking slightly in a way that would embarrass him if only he wasn’t standing beside his best friend.

“You’ve got a duty,” Hunter reminds him bluntly, not indulging his lamentation. Fitz understands, but still it stings. “You said so yourself.”

Yes, he has a duty to provide and ensure the comfort of the people who have provided for him all of his life. He cannot forget it, though his current state of wretchedness is making him dangerously close to doing so. The consequences of it if he does forget are life-altering and there will be no going back. Marriages are alliances, business transactions and nothing more. A means to an end. To live without love will just have to be something he learns to bear.

“My duty isn’t favourable.”

“Duty is just duty, Fitz. Nobody’s ever said anything about liking it.”

Of course not, because that would be too much. Imagine all those young men and women over the country doing what they do for their own happiness as opposed to the happiness of others. To make their own lives rather than ensuring the continued success of their parents’. Marriage is to keep the money and the blood in one place, a desirable place, rather than have it spread amongst the population like an unstoppable disease. _We’re infected_ , he thinks, _and we like it. We can’t get enough._

Jemma Simmons is a countess in her own right, with a lands and money, and yet it’s still not enough and it never will be. He needs to marry, and marry soon, because as long as they’re both free there will always be this small part of him that will keep on hoping, waiting for a miracle.

He sighs, resisting the urge to scuff his foot on the stones. “Would be nice to just have a _choice_.”

Hunter turns to look up at the stars as well, and there’s a long silence before he says, “Well you do have a choice, mate. It’s just not an easy one.”

“You know that I couldn’t leave,” he tells Hunter. “I can’t.”

“Well there you go then.” He looks at Fitz and seems to soften slightly, no longer feeling the need to be the devil’s advocate. “She’s trying, Fitz. She’s really trying. You should do the same.”

He steps forward and touches Fitz lightly on the arm. “I’m going inside. Come in when you’re ready,” he says, and then he is gone.

Fitz doesn’t want to try. He wants Jemma. Doesn’t he deserve happiness? He looks up at the stars again, the way they just keep shining, and he wonders if, somewhere, Jemma is looking at them, too.

“I know what I promised you, and I know I’m letting you down it’s just… it’s just hard when you’re not here.” There’s nothing to interrupt him, no sound from anything, and it’s with a lump in his throat he continues on. 

“I hope you get to be happy, Jemma. I hope at least one of us is… I’ll marry someone, I’ll keep the estate afloat but it won’t be right… there’s never going to be anyone else but you.”

He gives the words time to float, time to be heard, hoping that, somehow, they'll find their way to her. 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading! I hope you enjoyed it. Please feel free to leave kudos/comments. Please feel free not to. Either way, I hope you have a lovely day!


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